


Bushels of Bad Habits

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Series: Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-15 01:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16924329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: the-neon-pineapple: does sam ever go back and reread The Monster At The End Of This Book to see Chuck's official version of their first meeting, in the stamp me with your signature 'verse? seems like he'd make himself sad if he did, cos those are ruby days, but that Is a classic Winchester pastime. making oneself miserable.





	Bushels of Bad Habits

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Tumblr and I... completely forgot to post it here. It's been tidied up a bit.

They’re in the preliminary stages of writing their next textbook. That usually means they’re working separately. Sam is in one of their libraries/spare bedrooms trying to lock down a topic that won’t be too sweeping while Chuck stays in the kitchen, still focusing on his fiction, for now.

He’s logged in to the bunker’s digital archives and he’s got a few choice books around him. There are already plenty of volumes on psychics, but none written by Winchesters, focusing on the very complicated dangers of having to hunt them. Of course, when you think you’re gonna write about psychics, you run into the borderlands pretty quickly. That’s where he is, now: deciding on a distinct line. Whether they can really build one cohesive book on one particular type of psychic or if that opens you up too far, to a place where you really feel pressed to explain if fortunetellers, seers, witches, prophets, timejumpers, dreamwalkers, angels, even gods are in the same vein. Those who steal into your mind, those who look forward, those who do those things under orders or through no choice of their own. Charlie recently tracked down two young women who have them questioning how much will is even involved in this shit. A psychic and a dreamwalker, neither of whom pursued nor cultivated their powers, but put themselves in an arguably equal amount of danger by attempting to deny and ignore their genetic inheritance.

This might be too broad. Sam is nodding to himself and half-way to just throwing in the towel and picking another topic, something smaller or more specific. He’s reading what little info they have on seers, people who pick the future out of nowhere without even trying, and the few narratives that exist cross over damn closely to his husband’s own experiences. It’s fascinating. He pulls up the PDF of _The Monster At The End Of This Book_ just to check something out, but doesn’t find what he’s looking for while skimming.

Might be that it’s not in the book. Chuck’s admitted there are places where he gets tripped up in his own recollection of the _Supernatural_ books because he didn’t put everything in them. And, now, he knows more about that time and the time after that he forgets wasn’t even a part of the published (and stolen, unpublished) series. Maybe Sam’s having a moment like that.

It’s… certainly a mindfuck going back over what they were reading about themselves that they were reading about themselves while…. reading about himself. He almost closes the file to try to shake his thoughts clear. But scrolls through to the climactic confrontation with Lilith and.

Realizes their conversation wasn’t entirely omitted from the book.

They spoke about the demon blood. They spoke about not speaking about the demon blood. But Chuck doesn’t make mention of that, here. In fact, he kept true to his explanations throughout the remaining book volumes - he never did mention that Sam was drinking demon blood. Just that he was poisoned with it as a child.

What Carver Edlund does betray in the book about their conversation, however, comes off as almost more damning and intimate.

For Chuck.

He holds their conversation to the idea that Sam is concerned that his brother is gonna have to end the fight over the apocalypse. That Dean might not be strong enough to do so and certainly shouldn’t have to do it on his own. The author’s heart is heavy for him. Knowing how deeply they feel for what remains of their small family makes him a little jealous he’ll never know what it’s like to be so protected; so loved without question. Sam hadn’t read through the file before and is shocked to find the thoughts laid bare.

He has the benefit of Dean’s perspective, here, too. Scrambling for any way to prevent Sam’s immediate future from being fulfilled.

And now, knowing that the revelation was as good as stuffed down Chuck’s gullet by heaven, forcefully committed to paper under Zachariah’s “care”–

He thinks of the old scars on Chuck’s hands. So faint you can hardly see them, except at the right angle.

He skips to the end of the document.

_“This is heaven’s will,” the almighty light says to the author. “There is no way this cannot happen.”_

Chuck saw an ending that isn’t explained, here, except to tease at it being assured and gruesome and in a game of cosmic finger puppets between Mike and Luci.

The author feels the oppressive light, hot, heavy and angry like an incapacitating hangover. He was forced to _see_ in this way.

The monster at the end of the books was maybe Sam. He’s felt that way about himself a lot. It was maybe Satan. It was possibly Michael. But at the end of _this_ book, right now, it feels like all fingers are pointing to heaven. The angels who bestowed these oppressive headaches on Chuck that sent him into his bottles for years on end. The fallen angel who gave Sam no other choice than to drag him into a hole. The archangel who had the power to do right by his Father’s creations and who could have chosen to make peace with his brother, but would not, therefore scattering the Winchesters to their various dooms. Dean to the misery of loss and concealment in the suburbs. Sam and Adam to the real hell of the cage. Chuck into a fucking tree. Cas to anger and desperation.

Sam is gripped by anger at God, sometimes. He’s pretty sure it was God who drove Chuck into that tree to bring him home to heaven and let the prophecy end with his life. It’s been a long time since Chuck died a second time, at a demon’s hand, but, yes, Sam does enjoy a good wallow in that hopeless feeling. That pointless rage. He tries not to let it go on too long or run too deep. Together, Sam and Chuck feel so much over the bind, and if he wasn’t holding his pain close to his own heart so he could feel it privately and re-learn its lessons, Chuck would wander to this room with tears caught in his throat trying to fix something that Sam broke himself.

He snaps the laptop closed on the file in progress. Wandered too far from his purpose, anyway. He leaves _The Monster At The End Of This Book_ open on the desktop, like he’s going to return to it and wallow some more, but he doesn’t know that he’ll close out the tab when he returns to work tomorrow morning, uninterested in focusing on those feelings anymore after waking up warm to his favorite little world, right there in his arms.

For now, he goes out to the kitchen and finds Chuck stock-still in front of the stove, two massive oven mitts raised in the air in front of him as if he’s suited up for battle. They’re so deep they come up to his elbows.

But he hasn’t moved yet. Sam comes to lean on the counter facing him. “I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna fry something.”

“You can do it,” Sam nods.

“I always feel like I’m gonna set the house on fire. That’s a…. really big pool of canola, right there, but it’s… it’s gonna make delicious things. _Delicious things_. I shouldn’t have to get all my fried things from fast food joints. I can do this. I will not spatter hot oil on myself,” he seems like he’s been psyching himself up like this for several minutes. “I can make my own onion rings. I can do this.”

He considers the pan of oil. Starts to frown.

“I can also make my own cake, which seems a lot less fraught and just as delicious.”

Sam turns slightly, reaches over, snaps on the burner. “Nope. We can do this.”

“Okay. I have to dredge.”

“You might have to take the mitts off to do that. Or the buttermilk and flour and shit gets all over the mitts.”

“Right.” He seems reluctant to remove his protection. “Right.”

“Let me have the mitts and you do the dirty part, how about that? I don’t wanna dredge shit and you don’t wanna fry shit.”

“I can fry shit!” he looks alarmed. “I can do this!”

Sam draws him in by the hips. Heat starts to rise near them. The smell of the oil starts to diffuse as it grows hot. He reaches to flick on the overhead fan before stripping Chuck of his gloves. “I want the mitts.”

“I… could do it.”

“We can switch when you’re done dredging, if you want. You can try it out. I can battle the oil until we get it to the right temperature. Less spatter, after that.”

Chuck wavers one more time. “I’m, like, _capable_ of this.”

“So am I.” He kisses Chuck’s head. “You know how buttermilk freaks me out. Save me from the buttermilk.”

“Okay.”

They burn a lot of onions. They smell atrocious, after, from standing over the oil. They’re forced, by dint of survival itself, to strip their stinky clothes and shower together.


End file.
